Benjamin S. Kelsey - Major Influencer

[Boom]

I would think that most here would have heard of Ben Kelsey. He was the USAAC pilot who flew the prototype P-38 Lightning on a record-setting transcontinental speed flight from California to New York in February 1939.

But there is so much more to this man.

He joined the USAAC in 1929.

He was Lieutenant Jimmy Doolittle's safety pilot during the first fully 'blind' instrument flight organised by the Guggenheim Fog Flying Laboratory on September 24, 1929.

In 1934, Kelsey was transferred to Material Command at Wright Field in Ohio, and served as fighter project officer in the Engineering Section. In this role he was the only person responsible for Air Corps fighter development, and was kept busy with inquiries and proposals from aircraft manufacturers.

He was a champion of liquid-cooled aero engines. In late 1936 to early 1937, Kelsey flight-tested the 12-cylinder Allison V-1710-C6 as installed in the experimental Consolidated XA-11A, reaching an altitude of 26,400 ft without turbo-supercharging.

In conjunction with Lieutenant Gordon P. Saville, Kelsey formulated two new high-altitude fighter specifications in February 1937; one for a single-engine fighter and one for a twin-engine fighter. Short circuiting inflexible Air Corps restrictions on pursuit (fighter) aircraft (which limited guns and ammo amounts to 500lb) by labelling the new specs as for 'Interceptors', the new specs resulted in the Bell P-39 Airacobra and the Lockheed P-38 lightning. Heavy hitters armed with Cannon and Mg's.

Note: After the Bell XP-39 prototype flew, Kelsey was sent to England. Having handed oversight of the project off to colleagues they, in keeping with advice from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), ordered the removal of turbo-superchargers from the aircraft. Which turned a potentially good aircraft into a mediocre one.

He formulated the specifications for the Curtiss XP-46 and placed an order for two prototypes in September 1939, hoping that the advanced aircraft would replace the P-40. 'Hap'Arnold' however cancelled the project, as he did not want to cause any delays with the production of the P-40. The Anglo-French Purchasing Commission were told to find an aircraft manufacturer that wasn't busy with war production, on the condition that the NACA airflow research data collected on the XP-46 be available to them. North American accepted the challenge and produced the NA-73, later deveolped into the P-51 Mustang.

On July 7, 1941, even before the NA-73 prototypes arrived at Wright Field, Kelsey ordered 150 P-51s from NAA. Nine months later Kelsey ordered 500 nearly identical A-36 Apache models that he was able to purchase with funds intended for attack bombers. In this manner Kelsey kept the NAA assembly line busy, so that the factory would be primed to make Mustang fighters once a new contract could be arranged.

In April 1941 Kelsey would ferry a Spitfire Mk.Va from Dayton to Los Angeles (and back) so that it could be examined further at a California facility. He found the short range to be a extremely restrictive and tiring, given the many fuel stops that had to be made. As a result of that experience in November 1941, Kelsey asked his Lockheed contacts to design drop tanks to extend the range of the P-38, even though Air Corps policy at the time was absolutely inflexible toward fighter aircraft carrying external fuel tanks.

In the spring of 1942 Kelsey was attached to the VIII Fighter Command at Dow Field in Maine, to assist in preparing for trans-Atlantic ferry flights in support of Operation Bolero. As an acting colonel, Kelsey was assigned to the 14th Fighter Group for the purpose of flying one of the group's fighters and for making sure preparations were sufficient. In July, with the call sign Shoe Black 7, he flew a P-38F in the first ferry flight of fighters across the North Atlantic to England.

In September 1942, he resumed his former position as chief of the Pursuit Branch, and the following July he was named chief of the Flight Research Branch, Flight Test Division.


In November 1943, Kelsey was deputy chief of staff of the IX Fighter Command, and in February 1944 he was appointed chief of the Operation Engineering Section of the Eighth Air Force Headquarters. In February 1945 he was assigned to the Materiel Division at Air Corps Headquarters.

With the war over, Kelsey was assigned to the Materiel Command at Wright Field as chief of the All-Weather Operations Section. From December 1946 to January 1948 he served successively as assistant deputy commanding general for personnel; deputy commanding general for personnel, and chief of personnel and administration.


After attending the National War College in August 1948, he graduated the following June and remained there as an instructor. In June 1952 he was appointed Deputy Director of Research and Development in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Development at Air Force Headquarters, and was promoted to brigadier general in September.

In October 1954, Kelsey was a key member of the Research Airplane Committee which underwrote the North AmericanX-15 project. The committee, headed by Hugh Dryden, evaluated the proposed Mach 7 hypersonic aircraft design which aimed to reach altitudes of 300,000 ft. On the committee, Kelsey was sole representative for the Air Force.

He retired on 31 December, 1955.

Quite amazing the influence this man had on the USAAF. To me, his impact on the Air Service was greater than that of Billy Mitchell. Surprising that a book has not been written on his life, would make for facinating reading.

 

[Shortround6]

Note: After the Bell XP-39 prototype flew, Kelsey was sent to England. Having handed oversight of the project off to colleagues they, in keeping with advice from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), ordered the removal of turbo-superchargers from the aircraft. Which turned a potentially good aircraft into a mediocre one.

OK, lets see what it would take for the XP-39 to reach it's "potential"
1. Fix the cooling system, which was too small and had bad airflow.
2. Fix the oil cooling system, which was too small and had bad airflow.
3. Fix the turbo intercooler, which was too small and had bad airflow. (seeing a pattern here?)
4. Fix the canopy, which was too large and had a lot of drag (bad airflow).

Poor photo but the large scoop on the left side was a problem, the radiators were in the wing and exit's were the slots in the upper wing about 1/2 way along in the walkway.
The XP-39 was sent to the Langley field wind tunnel with only of few hours of actual flight time. The famed 390mph flight never happened.
They wound up stuffing the radiatiors/oil coolers into the space in the fuselage belly where the turbocharger had been.
They tried to stuff a quart of equipment into a pint pot and failed. They needed a larger airplane to hold everything without excessive drag.
All the wishing in the world cannot repeal the laws of physics.
A mockup of a turbocharger installation after they got the cooling problems figured out.

at low altitudes it was 30-40mph slower than normal P-39.

 

[fannum]

As one of the first NASM docents upon the 1976 opening of the of that epic museum, I'm forever gratified to have become a friend of Gen. Kelsey when he was appointed Lindbergh Fellow. During his tenure there, he completed his book, The Dragon's Teeth?, describing much of how the USAAC evolved in WWII, especially those growth years through 1942. While he modestly passes over his role, he gives full credit to the Lieutenants, Captains and Majors who endured lack of pay, flight time and promotion in the '20s and '30s to be ready to become the movers, shakers and leaders of WWII. Amazon.com: The Dragon's Teeth?: 9780874745740: Benjamin S. Kelsey: Books
Instead of trying to solve every military challenge in advance, Kelsey wrote that a nation must save its money and keep a core of military engineering, manufacturing industries and potential leaders alive so that they can quickly expand to meet the challenge. He compared this careful husbanding of the potential for war-making effort with the myth of Cadmus, a Phoenician prince who supposedly sowed dragon's teeth in the ground to create an instant army.

Boom's brief and very welcome introduction to Kelsey misses some notable accomplishments.

At the age of 15 he completed a flying course with the Curtiss Flying Service at Garden City, NY. He graduated from MIT with a BS in mechanical engineering in 1928, and stayed to teach and conduct research work in the aeronautics department. After his blind flying safety pilot role with fellow MIT grad, Lt. Jimmy Doolittle (who had pioneered the Aeronautical Engineering degree there), in 1931 Kelsey too obtained his MS in aeronautical engineering at MIT.

Awarded the DFC "For heroism and extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight. On December 24, 1936, at about 7:30 p. m., Lieutenant Kelsey was piloting an airplane from Mitchel Field, Long Island, New York, to Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, flying at an altitude of approximately 1,800 feet when the left motor instantaneously failed and the left wing burst into flames. By his outstanding courage, sound judgment, and at the risk of his life Lieutenant Kelsey "maintained control of the airplane and, with great difficulty due to the darkness of the night and the glare from the burning airplane, effected a safe landing at Wright Field, thereby preventing the destruction to valuable Government property."

Still a 1st Lieutenant after a decade in the Army Air Corps, Kelsey took the prototype XP-38 across the country on a record-breaking speed flight in February 1939. As he was directed into the landing pattern at Mitchel Field, the prototype's carburetors iced up and Kelsey belly-landed into a sand trap at a golf course, destroying the plane. General Arnold was very happy with the speed demonstration and ordered Kelsey to proceed managing further development.

In '42, by then Lieutenant Colonel Ben Kelsey gently brought the modified YP-38 in for a landing at the Lockheed Air Terminal just as smoothly as he could praying the tail would stay on. A dive had resulted in a loud bang from the tail followed by an odd vibration in the rudder pedals. Kelsey found the plane wouldn't fly straight and was shuddering slightly. There was a bend and twist in the booms and the two tails were a little skewed. Then in 1943, Kelsey performed a flight test in CA on a modified P-38G to see if Lockheed's newly developed dive flap could be engaged after terminal velocity. In a dive he engaged the new flaps, but nothing happened ... and the handle came off in his hand! Kelsey applied full rudder and aileron, and the aircraft lost one wing and the whole tail, entering an inverted flat spin. Kelsey bailed out and suffered a broken ankle.

Always working with technical and operational measures to increase range, while on Doolittle's 8th AF staff, he negotiated, planned and led some of the shuttle missions of B-17s and B-24s to reach normally out of range targets in the SE Reich and Austria, continuing on to airfields now in Russian hands, and then returning after fueling and rearming to again bomb on the return of his shuttle mission.

As then NASM Docent Chairman and having quit my job to finish advanced degrees myself, I had the flexibility to drop in to NASM for lunches with curators, especially enjoying when often neglected old-timers Paul Garber, Charles Gibb-Smith, Ben Kelsey and I could tell tales over sandwiches ... amazingly joined by Gen. Doolittle and Mme. Chennault, Gen. Ira Eaker, and Col. John Macready. In such an august group, my only contribution was to raise questions to spark discussions.

Sadly, Gen. Ben died too early from cancer. As a mark of the man, he was buried in his special tweed jacket.
Having retired to a Virginia farm, he raised sheep among his pursuits. But then, he sheared the wool, processed it, spun it on a manual spinning wheel, dyed the threads, wove them into fabric, and tailored his coat, rarely being seen at NASM without it.

 

[ColFord]

On July 7, 1941, even before the NA-73 prototypes arrived at Wright Field, Kelsey ordered 150 P-51s from NAA. Nine months later Kelsey ordered 500 nearly identical A-36 Apache models that he was able to purchase with funds intended for attack bombers. In this manner Kelsey kept the NAA assembly line busy, so that the factory would be primed to make Mustang fighters once a new contract could be arranged.

Another variant of this is that "due to his great foresight, he personally ordered".

No,

The order for 150 NA-91 P-51 (no suffix) Mustangs, the variant with the 4 x 20mm Hispano cannon armament, was instigated by the Air Ministry as a follow on to the first direct purchase orders for the 320 NA-73 Mustang I and 300 NA-83 Mustang I aircraft made by the BPC for the UK. It was also the first for the UK to be made under Lend Lease, hence why the aircraft required a USAAC/USAAF designation. It was intended to be the first of a number of orders submitted for follow on orders of Allison engine Mustangs, with all of them intended for delivery to the UK. But then the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor required the retention of 58 of them for the US and revision of future proposed Mustang order deliveries to the UK under Lend Lease. The decision on the Purchase was made by the US Government body that examined UK Government requests made for supply of equipment and munitions under Lend Lease, then fed down to the various parts of the US armed forces for the orders to be placed on behalf of the end user customer, in this case the UK.

The NA-97 A-36A MUSTANG - it was never officially given the name 'Apache' by either NAA or the USAAC/USAAF. The attachment of the 'Apache' name to the A-36A has been, based on the research and evidence so far, been traced to a rather prolific aviation writer in the late 1960s into early 1970s, who through poor research and a lack of understanding incorrectly attached the name to the type (was also a good promotional and marketing hook for his articles). NAA themselves, before the first A-36A rolled off the production line had advised the USAAF that all aircraft of the family P-51 and derivatives eg A-36A would be known by the name given to the type by the UK and by which it was already well known, being Mustang. It's something that is taking time to get the error of the 'Apache' name corrected across so many sources, locations, websites, etc. National Museum of the USAF looked at all the evidence a few years back and changed/corrected all their in museum and online material to correctly reflect the A-36A being named Mustang.

The NA-97 A-36A was not by any means 'a nearly identical' model to the P-51. It was in fact more closely related to the earlier NA-83 Mustang I built by NAA under direct order for the UK. An NA-83 RAF serial AM118 was used as the prototype/test article for the A-36A modifications.

For a more historically accurate account of who actually pushed for and eventually forced through the approvals for the A-36A, I can recommend William Marshall and Lowell Ford's work on the origins and development of the Mustang (pages 124 thru 131,) also the book by Matt Willis - see attached for details/covers. Kelsey's role was minimal if at all in that process.

 

[drgondog]

Note: After the Bell XP-39 prototype flew, Kelsey was sent to England. Having handed oversight of the project off to colleagues they, in keeping with advice from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), ordered the removal of turbo-superchargers from the aircraft. Which turned a potentially good aircraft into a mediocre one.

The issue was a poorly designed fighter wrt drag, combined with a terrible turbosupercharger. The P-39 basically had its cooling system reworked combined with several drag reducing chages to the airframe.

He formulated the specifications for the Curtiss XP-46 and placed an order for two prototypes in September 1939, hoping that the advanced aircraft would replace the P-40. 'Hap'Arnold' however cancelled the project, as he did not want to cause any delays with the production of the P-40. The Anglo-French Purchasing Commission were told to find an aircraft manufacturer that wasn't busy with war production, on the condition that the NACA airflow research data collected on the XP-46 be available to them. North American accepted the challenge and produced the NA-73, later deveolped into the P-51 Mustang.

No. Colin covered most of this on the NA-73/-91 confusion but a.) the XP-46 was second only to the XP-75 as a disastrous large scale production order. It was the hoped for replacement for the P-40, and b.) NAA was nudged by Sir Henry Self to purchase the P-40 and P-46 wind tunnel data to circumvent attempts by Curtiss later for theft of secrets - which Atwood did on April 11, 1941just as specifications for NA-73 was concluded. Also Self recognized that NAA had Zero experience in the design of Meridith cooling systems while Curtiss touted the XP-46 as incorporating the concept. The NACA drag data was funded by AAC. Atwood negotiated for design and performance analysis by Curtiss for the P-40 and P-46, which was delivered in the same month as the XP-73 drawing package was released to the Experimental Production Dpt..

XP-46 was started long before the NA-73 but only flew several months afterwards. It grossly underperformed, was cancelled because it wasn't as good as the P-40, and spawned another turkey P-60 series that Curtiss built to try to salvage the P-46 disaster. It's intended 'meridith effect' cooling design failed to achieve drag reducing qualities even after long periods of wind tunnel study and re-design efforts at NACA. Arnold cancelled the order because the man in charge would not pull the plug (MG Oliver Echols, Kelsey's boss). The chief architect, Don Berlin left Curtiss for Fisher/GMC just in time to lead the XP-57 bid and development into another colossal turkey. Arnold ordered cancellation, in July 1943, if flight tests were sub-commitments, but Echols managed to drag the P-75 along six months after the test flights.

On July 7, 1941, even before the NA-73 prototypes arrived at Wright Field, Kelsey ordered 150 P-51s from NAA. Nine months later Kelsey ordered 500 nearly identical A-36 Apache models that he was able to purchase with funds intended for attack bombers. In this manner Kelsey kept the NAA assembly line busy, so that the factory would be primed to make Mustang fighters once a new contract could be arranged.

No, no and no. Kelsey was totally disinterested in either the P-51 or the A-36. His signature for the Mustang IA orders was required under the new Lend Lease rules in which Army had to 'own them' before 'selling to RAF. He was out of Fighter Branch when CAS division and Plans Division wanted the A-36 and General Echols fought to prevent the purchase, and accept XA 32 instead. By this time Kelsey was up to his ears in 8th AF Fighter Command P38 Ferry challenge to UK. Kelsey returned briefly in late 1942 but had zero to do with R&D or procurement at Materiel Command until after WWII was over. Echols wanted NAA Mustang production shut down and replaced with B-25s. Echols resisted the follow on P-51A but was crushed again by MG Muir Fairchild chief, Operational Requirements. Arnold via Fairchild also built in the change to P-51B in the P-51A contract and was instrumental in authorizing NAA to proceed with NA-101 XP78/51B Merlin conversions AND assigning NAA priority for Packard engines which Echols had denied in 1941. Up to that point all Packard Merlin (1650-1) production assigned to Curtiss. Echols further sabotaged delivery of the 1650-3 quantities that NAA required by approving a large order of FY 44 replacement 1650-1s (for P-40F/L), conflicting with NAA 1650-3 engine deliveries - but Fairchild crushed Echols again.

In April 1941 Kelsey would ferry a Spitfire Mk.Va from Dayton to Los Angeles (and back) so that it could be examined further at a California facility. He found the short range to be a extremely restrictive and tiring, given the many fuel stops that had to be made. As a result of that experience in November 1941, Kelsey asked his Lockheed contacts to design drop tanks to extend the range of the P-38, even though Air Corps policy at the time was absolutely inflexible toward fighter aircraft carrying external fuel tanks.

No, as chief, Fighter branch Kelsey encouraged Lockheed to propose a combination bomb rack/drop tank installation for the XP-49/P-39 in August 1940, right after Arnold raised the '1,500 mi escort fighter" to number one priority in the Emmons Board recommendations. In this Kelsey was far-seeing because he tried to encourage high-altitude pressurization but Wright Field (echols) chose Ferry tank approach and the tank pressurization scheme of slaving vacuum pump exhaust was not incorporated into production until J-15.
The drop tank fuel, plumbing and rack design and modification in prototype was complete in November 1941 with provisions for fuel feel and 75-gal drop tanks - and flew in December. Kits were produced for all P-38E and F-4s.

In the spring of 1942 Kelsey was attached to the VIII Fighter Command at Dow Field in Maine, to assist in preparing for trans-Atlantic ferry flights in support of Operation Bolero. As an acting colonel, Kelsey was assigned to the 14th Fighter Group for the purpose of flying one of the group's fighters and for making sure preparations were sufficient. In July, with the call sign Shoe Black 7, he flew a P-38F in the first ferry flight of fighters across the North Atlantic to England.

In September 1942, he resumed his former position as chief of the Pursuit Branch, and the following July he was named chief of the Flight Research Branch, Flight Test Division.


In November 1943, Kelsey was deputy chief of staff of the IX Fighter Command, and in February 1944 he was appointed chief of the Operation Engineering Section of the Eighth Air Force Headquarters. In February 1945 he was assigned to the Materiel Division at Air Corps Headquarters.

It was here at VIII ATS that he pulled two P-38J and sent them to R-R for Merlin conversion - but project immediately halted, hand slapped, He returned to US in 1945 as you started.